Even in the archaic industry of accounting, I could get remote desktop software or even mobile accounting applications to still get my work done. Messaging, email, G/L transactions, mobile banking and even financial reconciliations can all be done on your phone. Mobile office gives you all your desktop capabilities, and hell, even if you needed to view some NSFW sites, you don’t have to worry.

BUT.. As with most technological advances, if you lose it, you’re SOL…

So how do we filter out the nonsense? Well it takes research and leg work. You have to know what opinions matter to you and research it. Gullible people are the most vulnerable right now. They are getting so many mixed messages, they’re no longer sure of what to believe. There are literally millions of groups out there that you can follow and get acquainted with, but the thing you need to remember is the separation of fact from fiction is crucial.

What’s currently on the news? The BP Oil spill. Fact, oil is being spilled out from the ocean. Fiction, BP is the only one to blame. They didn’t build the oil platform, and they didn’t run the platform. So why are they to blame? Well there’s obviously a whole lot more to the story then the surface headlines. Currently protestors are at various locations trying to get their voice to be heard. But these protestors are also blocking the efforts to clean up the spill.

My point is you need to do your research. It’s been a fact of life growing up, and the importance has grown exponentially. Don’t just read the facebook status or the twitter posts. Open up the story lines, and just do a little reading before you make your decision.

Once I heard earlier this year about Google Voice, I knew it was going to become a hot commodity. Not only has it been a widely popular and sought after beta release, but it’s pointed the largest flaws with the iPhone application market. As many already know, Apple blocked the Google Voice application from being used on the iPhone. Not only did this cause a controversy among iPhone users and Google Voice fans, but the FCC about the rejection terms behind market.

I do agree that Google Voice can present a huge problem with the cell phone markets, and could threaten the business market entirely. Why? Well because you can use Google Voice and spend 0 minutes of your account plan. But realistically, it’s all about who can meet the consumers needs better? Currently we’re in a not so great economic period, and if a company comes along and gives away something so useful and at such a low cost (FREE!!!), then why shouldn’t people use it, and why should a company block it?

In all honesty, it’s not about the iPhone at all. In fact, Apple doesn’t have anything to do with the cell phone market. That’s AT&T’s problem. So why are they blocking it? Well if you ask them, it’s functionality of the application, and not the purpose of it at all. After reading their responses to the FCC, you can obviously tell their reaching for the heavens here. They claim the application replaces the functions of the iPhone, but it doesn’t do that at all. It uses an entirely separate feature for doing this and does not disable, replace, or interfere with any of the iPhone’s features.

Which all of this goes back to my main point, iPhone could be killing themselves this time. So much controversy and media has ben centered around this, it’s hard to miss the Apples main problem is their limitation of a limitless market. Their own marketing strategy, “there’s an app for that…” is no longer true. Google Voice” Yeah, no app for that, but please subscribe to our overpriced mobile plan until we up the price when our next version comes out. I live and die by my Blackberry, and will never use a phone that determines my carrier for me. Business doesn’t work that way, and neither will I.

My main contribution to our company is the constant currency impacts. It was never such a big issues until this time last year, when the US dollar was strengthening and we were getting hurt by our currency impacts. Now, everything we post externally has a constant currency impact associated with it.

This quarter, we were lucky enough to have “help” due to currency impacts. Certain business units had a loss, and that loss wasn’t so bad as it showed because the currency rates helped us out a bit. So I’m not sure if that will make it more or less scrutinized then any other situation.

So during this call, I hear all of my numbers being called out directly. Which is somewhat nerve-racking, especially when the investors start their barrage of questions after the scripted call. I have to admit that our CFO has a gift when having to deal with the pressure of these calls. What he says will be torn to shreds, analyzed, and dissected countless times over the next few months. We are also watching, as I’m sure he is too, our stock price during the call. Luckily, it marginally dropped, and has since been flat.

Overall, it’s been a good 5 months for me here, and I’m excited to learn the things that I have. Being in the public eye is a bit strange at times, but a good learning experience. Hopefully with the future will be as bright, and I can day take the call instead of listening to it nervously.

Now that the government decided to bail more people out, and increase the budget, let’s see if we see if we get the same population of people in mortgage debt to now get into auto debt. Isn’t this the same thing? Helping those who “can’t” afford to, a way to “almost afford to?”

During President Obama’s campaign and a large chunk of the first 60 days of his presidency, he has shown patience and determination in keeping his eyes on the prize of two major economic goals: creating around 4 million jobs and getting credit going again. True, the plunging of the country’s financial crapper is taking longer than everyone wants, but I’m willing to give him some breathing room on that one, because that’s a pretty big piece of crap to drain overnight. However, Obama seems to have taken his eye off the ball a little bit and gotten pulled into the publicity. It seems that the plan isn’t to pull the economy from the bottomless pit of port-o-potty’s, but to point some fingers on who we think got us into this crap. We gave billions of taxpayer dollars to AIG, and the company has the balls to pay out huge bonuses to the execs, because you know they’re hurting too!

Now I get that AIG had some contractual obligations to these execs, and it was either pay up to get sued, but shouldn’t we set a restriction that voids these types of contracts if the government is forced to step in and bail them out? Shouldn’t the government hear the full plan on what happens with the money they just forked over? I guess that’s another thing for the Prez to think about.

Russians were the hardest hit with Moscow losing its title as the world’s billionaire capital to New York.  Bill Gates has become the richest man again, taking over the top spot with $40 billion after slipping to 3rd last year, when he was worth $58 billion.  How the hell can he survive on that?!  Warren Buffett fell to 2nd place with $37 billion, dropping $25 billion from last year.  Collectively, the top-three billionaires lost $68 billion in the year to Feb 13.  I’m setting up a donation account listed under “needy billionaires” at Chase Bank.

Steve Forbes said “Billionaires don’t have to worry about their next meal, but if their wealth is declining and you’re not creating numerous new billionaires, it means the rest of the world is not doing very well.”  In part, he’s right.  It goes to show that there’s just a lot less money to go around right now.  That’s vastly different from saying that there’s no money out there.  It’s just currently harder to come by, and the once cash flowing businesses are now penny pinching and suffering severe margin drops and revenue dips.  The money is out there, just not in the same places that it’s been.

At 4 years old, he’s already gaining a really great understanding that if he waits longer, he’ll accumulate more money. We let him know how much he has, and how much certain things cost, and then he shrugs it off and waits.  Never throws a tantrum or ask to have more money.  If people had an understanding like this, there would be a lot less credit trouble in the country, purchases would be made with a lot more sense, and there actually would be a lot less purchases made.

We are a country that continues to purchase an excess.  An excess of whatever.  Don’t believe me?  Move.  You always realize how much crap you have when you move.  You ask yourself, where did this stuff come from?  How did we get it?  If you think about what you need out of all that stuff, there’s a good rule of thumb that if you don’t touch it within 30 days, then you don’t need it.

My wife and I recently had a discussion about what we could get rid of if we wanted to, and looking around, we have things that are just there.  Do we need it?  Uhh, no.  I’m sure we got it from things we once needed, shopping on a wimb, or a decorative idea that we never completed.  The point is, we could be sitting around on money.

What I mean is you can minimalize and profit from it.  Also, nothing would change.  If we keep the objects and items that we use now, and sell the rest, our lives really wouldn’t change.  Our kids wouldn’t have a different life, and our lifestyle remains the same.

I told Josh once he gets enough money, he could buy that Star Wars toy, and his response was, “but then I’d have no money.”  He’s brilliant!  But that’s another post….

Well there are various answers to this.  When you enter the market, you often answer questions about how conservative or aggressive you want to be.  If you are conservative in nature, then you may want to cash out and minimize your loss, but the wise investor knows this isn’t the best action.  Cashing out now will minimize your current loss.  It will stop your value from going down further and you can choose to do something else with your money.  The problem is that the values will go back up.  It most likely will take 1-3 years to fully bounce back, but it most assuredly will happen.

There is a really great statement used for investing, if you need the money within the next 5 years, then the stock market is probably not for you.  A person came to me a few months ago saying that she had $5,000 and she needed $15,000.  She wanted to know how to invest quickly to get to that amount within 6 months.  If anybody knew the answer to that, they’d be a mega-millionaire just by selling that secret alone.  EVERYONE wants to get the most amount of return in the shortest amount of time.  Truth is that it can’t be done.  Not without gambling and risking the entire amount that you are investing.  I’m sure people have done it, but if they tried to do it again, they’d fail.  If they tried it again 100 times, they’d fail.

Another question I get is they want to start an on-line business with no start-up capital, only takes a minimal amount of time, and can replace their entire income so they can only work part-time from now on.  Yeah, well I love pigs and even if I super-glued their wings on, I’d never throw it out a window and ask it to fly.  Starting a company takes more time then working a normal job.  You end up living the job and must bootstrap for a period of time just to get by.  You often have to give up benefits, vacation, and your 401K until the company really takes off and can sustain that extra expense.  Even if you happen to have a fantastic idea, the work you need to do to get started is like working two jobs.

Also, never take shortcuts!!  Just seeing the amount of foreclosure, job losses, portfolio declines, lay-offs, etc. should be enough to get you really interested in how to become secure in your finances.  Adjustable rate mortgages, not diversifying your portfolio, and not saving money are just a few of the many mistakes we need to learn from.

Nobody is perfect, and even the best financiers in the country doesn’t make every right decision.  But making the correct choices in what you can control and starting from the bottom can be the best decision you’ve made.   Quick money making schemes, get rich quick decision making, and living outside your means are all factors that have put the country in the current financial crisis.  Learning from our mistakes won’t correct our wrongs, but can protect yourself from being a part of it.

So I’ve compiled a list of odd ball things that I’ve learned about myself and about being laid-off in general.

1. Even though it tastes better, home brewed coffee isn’t free. Even the worst tasting things taste a lot better when they’re free.
2. When my dog follows me when I get home from work, it’s cute.  When it’s the entire day, not so cute.
3. I always thought nap time was hard to deal with at work. MUCH harder when your bed is in the room next to you.
4. You find it more difficult to talk yourself out of opening a bottle of wine at 10am.
5. You’re depressed when you realize sports aren’t on during the day.
6. You respond to email immediately versus putting them on a “to be answered later when you feel like it” list.
7. Getting dressed up means brushing your teeth.
8. You start to notice small things around the house. Like furniture you had no idea you owned.
9. When your wife gives you that rare look, she’s not wanting a quickie.  She just needs you to move to the other side of the couch so she could finish cleaning around you.
10. You start to make money saving excuses, like not changing clothes to save on the water bill from doing laundry or eating all the food in the fridge so it doesn’t have to work so hard keeping it all cold.

In all seriousness, losing your job isn’t funny.  THANKFULLY I quickly found another position at BMC Software.  It was offered to me on the last day of my curent job.  It REALLY works out since I’ve been trying to find a way into that company since we decided to come to Houston in 2001.  When we look at everything now, I’m kind of coming out of this with a bonus and an extended vacation. So I can’t complain.

Something like 598,000 were laid off in January.  I’m just glad I didn’t have to meet those people in a parking lot somewhere.  That could have been one hell of a traffic jam to the unemployment office.

The statistics are scary.  Having such a lifestyle change is never easy for whatever level your position is.  Nobody seems safe and nobody is prepared.  If you happen to be in the same boat, I wish you the best and hope you have a similar outcome as myself and find something just as quick.